room, gently touching Luca’s slightly swollen, bruised cheek. Oscar felt an unexpected tightening in his chest as he watched the compassionate way her fingers caressed Luca’s face. Faith had accused him of being a jealous bastard a time or three thousand during their relationship, and he figured she hadn’t been too far off the mark. Of course, hindsight was twenty-twenty, and Faith, during their “off-again” times, had dated plenty of other men, which always provoked in him the other fault she constantly complained about. His temper.
None of those anxious, angry feelings were present as he watched Selene with Luca. And he tried to tell himself that was normal because Selene wasn’t his. Not truly. But…fuck…over the course of the past week or so, he couldn’t deny wishing she was. So why wasn’t he jealous of that touch, or of the genuine—shit—desire he saw in Luca’s eyes as he looked at her?
“Does anything still hurt? Would you like more medicine?” she asked.
“The pain is tolerable. Thank you for your concern.”
Oscar pulled on his jeans, but didn’t bother with his shirt. Selene, like him, had shed her jeans, sleeping in just a T-shirt. There wasn’t a shy bone in the woman’s body, her lack of inhibitions one of the things he admired most about her. She was confident and direct.
“I’m going to fry up some of that bacon we found last night,” Oscar said. He was risking grease splatter on his chest, but he’d rather deal with that than having his one shirt get dirty.
Luca’s eyes lit up at the mention of food, but he said, “American bacon?”
“Similar to fried pancetta,” Selene said.
“I’ve seen it on American TV and movies…”
Oscar waited. If Luca tried to turn down the bacon the way he had the wine—talking about religious purity—the other man was going to find himself on the receiving end of a proper “Come to Jesus” lecture.
“…and I’ve always wanted to try it.”
“Right answer,” Oscar said.
The three of them made their way to the kitchen, and Oscar rummaged around in the fridge and pantry while Selene and Luca sat at the table.
They both offered to help, Luca hesitantly mimicking Selene’s offer, but Oscar had waved them off, telling them they’d just get in his way. Pulling the bacon out of the fridge, he placed half a dozen slices in the pan, then opened a can of whole potatoes he planned to turn into hash browns. He’d kill for an onion, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
While he cooked, Selene and Luca had a supervillain conversation while sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee out of novelty chicken cups.
Oscar tried to remember if any comic book villains had the equivalent of Alfred. It was odd, because in his family, he was the morally ambiguous one. Walt saved lives, Langston blew shit up, but also built robots to help blow up things safely, and his sister was an artist who used her platform to address social justice issues.
He wrote programs that could find almost anyone and anything. Data mining wasn’t what most lay people thought of when they heard hacking, but it was infinitely more valuable than being able to send someone a computer virus or steal credit card information from big box stores.
Maybe this was one of the reasons he objected so strongly to the idea of the Trinity Masters. It was exclusive and secret. The kind of secret that he would never have even known to look for.
Selene wished they were having this conversation in her office at Cornell, or even better, one of the labs. Either place would have had the tools she wanted, even if that “tool” was as simple as a whiteboard or a full-sized piece of paper. Instead, she was sitting on one end of the couch, which she had converted back from a bed while Oscar dealt with the breakfast dishes.
The blank backside of a junk-mail envelope was the best she’d been able to come up with for her notes.
“I want to finish our talk about the bomb.”
Luca looked uncomfortable. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
“You’ll tell us everything,” Oscar yelled from the kitchen.
“I’ll tell you what I can from memory. I do not have every detail memorized.”
“First,” Selene said, pulling Luca’s attention back. “Where did you learn about nuclear physics and bomb making?”
Luca shifted in his seat, taking a moment during which he frowned.
“When I was sixteen, I was switched from a regular secondary school to a…a training program. The Bellator Dei had just been blessed with a